BMW iX xDrive40 RANGE TEST (highway and city)

I’m going to test the range on the highway first. There is also a little bit of sporty driving on country roads in this test. The purpose of this part of the test is to find out the minimum range of this car by testing it at higher average speeds.

At the beginning of this part of the test, the battery is at 71%. I did the test in February and it was between 8 and 9 degrees. It also rained a lot that day. We begin with a 59-km ride, purely on the highway, driving at 120 mph. This was a drive from Brussels to an area near Namur. The battery is 50% empty and the average consumption is 23.9 kWh. I will base my estimated range on consumption and net battery capacity. The total range based on this consumption is 297 km.

I now get off the highway to drive more sportily on country roads. After this 33 km stretch, the total average consumption is 23.5 kWh. The range has now been increased to 302 km. Now we drive all the way back on the highway. Let’s look at the end result.

The battery dropped to 14% and the total length of the ride was 166 km. The average consumption was 23.6 so the total range on the highway is 301 km.

Then I stopped at the Fastned Fast Charger on the E19 and wanted to test fast charging. This did not really go as planned. Due to circumstances, I had not received a charging pass from BMW. I have a charging app that I use sometimes, but it doesn’t work at fastned fast chargers. So to make a long story short, I couldn’t charge there. The range indicator indicated a range left of 44 km. You don’t want to get stuck with a slow AC charging station somewhere along the way. To drive home, it was still 27 km. Lets do this.

Eventually I ended up at the charging station with only 4% left in the battery. Let’s look at the full picture. I drove a total of 271 km of which a total of 205 km was on the highway and 66 km in town and country roads. Consumption was 23.7 and based on this consumption, the range of a full battery is 300 km. Most of the kilometers are on the highway, so that’s why it’s close to highway range. With the battery at 4%, the range indicator indicated 14 km of range left. So if you were to add this to the kilometers of the trip, the range would be 285 km. However, I prefer to look at net battery capacity and consumption.

The iX xDrive40 is equipped with a Combined Charging Unit (CCU). With this system, the iX can be charged with either AC or DC. I wanted to test the charging time at an AC charging station. It has a built-in AC on-board charger rated at 11 kW. BMW says it takes less than 8 hours to charge from 0 to 100% at 11 kW. In practice, the car indicated it would take 15 hours to fully charge. I checked the speed in my app and I only got about 3.7 kw. I then just aborted this test early.

I went back to the fast charger in the evening. In the meantime, I registered in the fastned app so I could do my DC fast charge test. This car can charge quickly at speeds of up to 150 kW. It can be charged from 10 to 80 percent in 31 minutes. Watch our full night test drive with demo of the ambient lighting here.

I will do a quick 30-minute recharge test. At the beginning of the test, the battery is at 11%. I charged to 75% in 30 minutes. I gained 88 km after 10 minutes, and then about 67 km after 20 minutes and 49 km after 30 minutes of charging. So in total I gained 204 km of range in 30 minutes. The charge rate at the beginning was 148 kw almost immediately. After 10 minutes, it was still at 122. It dropped during the session and at the end I was charging at 64 kw.

How long would it take to fully charge the battery with this DC charging station? Well at the beginning of the charging session the car indicated that it would take 1h18 to fully charge the battery from 11% to 100%.

Now let’s test the range at lower average speeds in the city. I wanted to know what the maximum range of this car could be. Let’s take a look at my results. The weather during this part of the test was slightly better. At least it wasn’t raining anymore. The temperature was between 7 and 8 degrees. At the beginning of this part of the test, the battery is at 58%.

The first leg was about a 12 km ride in Brussels. I averaged 21.7 kwh which resulted in an estimated range of 327 km. The rest of the ride rode in Flanders. Still in an urban area but with many opportunities for continuous driving.

I further drained the battery to 26% over a total 114 km ride. Over the course of the trip, consumption dropped to 18.9 kWh. The range in the city is thus 376 km.

In conclusion, I can say that the driving range of the BMW iX xdrive40 is somewhere between 301 km and 376 km, based on similar driving conditions and measured in rather colder temperatures between 7 and 9 degrees and also with a lot of rain during my highway driving range test. I suspect that in much colder temperatures you will probably get less range, but in warmer temperatures you will get more range. I would say around the WLTP range of 394 – 426 km.